The Term Synthetic
by Cillian'sEyes
Summary: Apollo Kane is an Android Engineer and one of the two survivors of the Nostromo incident. But how will Apollo and Ripley cope when they find out that a colony have settled on the same planet where they found the alien? With a team of Marines, they head back to LV-426. But Apollo starts to fall for the Android Technician on-board. Set in the Movie: Aliens. Bishop/OC
1. Chapter 1

(Author's Note: So this is my first story! I absolutely adore the Alien franchise, my favorite character has always been Bishop, so I started to write this a few months ago. I have about four chapters already written up. Most of the scenes and dialogue are taken from the novelization.)

Disclaimer: I do not own Aliens or any part of the franchise. I only own Apollo Kane.

Three dreamers.

Not so very much difference between them despite the more obvious distinctions. One was of modest size, the other two larger. Two were female, the other male. The mouths of the first two contained a mixture of sharp and flat teeth, a clear indication that they were omnivorous, while the maxillary cutlery of the other was intended solely for slicing and penetrating. Both were the scions of a race of killers. This was a genetic tendency the first two dreamers kind had learned to moderate. The other dreamer remained wholly feral.

More differences were apparent in their dreams than in their appearance. The first two dreamers slept uneasily, memories of unmentionable terrors recently experienced oozing up from the depths of their subconscious to disrupt the normally placid stasis of hypersleep. They would have tossed and turned dangerously if it weren't for the capsule that contained and restrained their movements - that and the fact that in deep sleep, muscular activity is reduced to a minimum. So they tossed and turned mentally. They were not aware of this. During hypersleep one is aware of nothing.

Every so often, though, a dark and vile memory would rise to the fore, like sewage seeping up beneath a city street. Temporarily it would overwhelm their rest. Then they would moan within their capsules. Their heartbeats would increase. The computer watched over them like an electronic angel would note the accelerated activity and respond by lowering their body temperature another degree while increasing the flow of stabilizing drugs to their system. The moaning would stop. The dreamer would quiet and sink back into her cushions. It would take time for the nightmare to return.

Next to one dreamer, the small killer would react to these isolated episodes by twitching as if in response to the larger sleepers distress. Then it, too, would relax again, dreaming of small warm bodies and the flow of hot blood, of the comfort to be found in the company of its own kind, and the assurance that this would come again. Somehow it knew that all dreamers would awaken together or not at all.

The last possibility did not unsettle its rst. It was possessed of more patience than its companions in hypersleep, and a more realistic perception of its position in the cosmos. It was content to sleep and wait, knowing that if and when consciousness returned, it would be ready to stalk and kill again. Meanwhile it rested.

Time passes. Horror does not.

In the infinity that is space, suns are but grains of sand. A white dwarf is barely worthy of notice. A small spacecraft like the lifeboat of the vanished vessel _Nostromo_ is almost too tiny to exist in such emptiness. It drifted through the great nothing like a freed electron broken loose from atomic orbit.

Yet even a freed electron can attract attention, if others equipped with the appropriate detection instruments happen to chance across it. So it was the lifeboats course took it close by a familiar star. Even so, it was a stroke of luck that it was not permanently overlooked. It passed very near another ship; in space, 'very near' being anything less than a light-year. It appeared on the fringe of a range spanners screen.

Some who saw the blip argued for ignoring it. It was too small to be a ship, they insisted. It didn't belong where it was. And ships talked back. This one was as quiet as the dead. More likely it was only an errant asteroid, a renegade chunk of nickel-iron off to see the universe. If it was a ship, at the very least it would have been blaring to anything within hearing range with an emergency beacon.

But the captain of the ranging vessel was a curious fellow. A minor deviation in the course would give them a chance to check out the silent wanderer, and a little clever bookkeeping would be sufficient to justify the detours cost to the owners. Orders were given, and computers worked to adjust trajectory. The captains judgment was confirmed when they drew alongside the stranger; it was a ships lifeboat.

Still no signs of life, no response to polite inquiries. Even the running lights were out. But the ship was not completely dead. Like a body in frigid weather, the craft had withdrawn power from its extremities to protect something vital deep within.

The captain selected three men to board the drifter. Gently as an eagle mating with a lost feather., the larger craft sidled close ot the Narcissus. Metal kissed metal. Grapples were applied. The sounds of the locking procedure echoed through both vessels.

Wearing full pressure suits, the three boarders entered their airlock. They carried portable lights and other equipment. Air being too precious to abandon to vacuum, they waited patiently while oxygen was inhaled by their ship. Then the outer-lock door slid aside.

Their first sight of the lifeboat was disappointing: no internal lights visible through the port in the door, no sign of life within. The door refused to open when external controls were pressed. It had been jammed shut from the inside. After the men made sure there was no air in the lifeboats' cabin, a robot welder was put to work on the door. Twin torches flared brightly in the darkness, slicing into the door from two sides. The flames met at the bottom of the barrier. Two men braced the third, who kicked the metal aside the way was open.

The lifeboats interior was as dark and still as a tomb. A section of portable grappling cable snaked along the floor. It's torn and frayed tip ended near the exterior door. Up close to the cockpit a faint light was visiable. The men moved towards it.

The familiar dome a hypersleep capsule glowed from within. The intruders exchanged a glance before approaching. Two of them leaned over the thick glass of the transparent sarcophagi. Behind them, their companion was studying his instrument and muttered aloud.

"Internal pressure positive. Assuming normal hull and systems integrity. Nothing appears busted; just shut down to conserve energy. Capsule pressure steady. There's power feeding through, though I bet the batteries have just about had it. Look how dim the internal readouts are. Even see a hypersleep capsule like these two?"

"Late twenties." The speaker leaned over the glass and murmured into his suit pickup. "Good lookin' dame."

"Good lookin', my eye." His companion sounded disappointed. "Life function diodes are all green. That means they're alive. There goes our salvage profit, guys."


	2. Chapter 2

(Author's Note: Second Chapter, yay! Thank you to mysterygirl123 for the favorite.)

Disclaimer: I do not own Aliens or any part of the franchise. I only own Apollo Kane.

_"Come see Kane right away." The request was urgently phrased, yet with a curios hesitancy to it._

_Dallas sat up straight, as did the others at the table. "Some change in his condition?"_

_"Is he alright?" Apollo demanded. They all understood how close the siblings were. After the death of their father a few years before they were assigned to the Nostromo they refused to be apart for very long. They needed each other more than they allowed to show._

_"It's simpler if you just come see him."_

_There was a concerned rush for the corridor. Coffee remained steaming on the deserted table. _

_Horrible visions clouded Apollo's vision as she made her way down to the infirmary with the others trailing behind. What gruesome after-effects had the alien disease produced in her older brother? She couldn't help but imagine a swarm of tiny grey hands, their single eye shining wetly, crawling possessively over the infirmary walls, or some leprous fungus enveloping the rotting corpse of the luckless Gilbert._

_They reached the infirmary, panting from the effort of running down the corridor and companionways. There was no cluster of replicated alien hands crawling on the walls. No alien growth, fungoid or otherwise, decorated the body of her brother. Ash had greatly underestimated the matter when he'd reported a change in Gilbert' condition._

_The exec was sitting up on the medical platform. His eyes were open and clear, functioning in proper concert with is brain. Those dark green eyes turned to take in the knot of gaping arrivals._

_"Kane?" Lambert couldn't believe it. "Are you alright?" He looked fine, as if nothing had ever happened._

_"Do you want anything?" asked Apollo, when he did not respond to Lambert's query._

_"Mouth's dry," He reminded her of a man coming out of amnesia. Her brother looked alert and fit, but puzzled for no particular reason, as though he were trying to organize his thoughts. "Can I have some water?"_

_Ash moved quickly to a dispenser, drew a plastic cupful and handed it to the elder Kane. The exec downed it in a single long swallow. Apollo noted the muscular co-ordination seemed normal. The hand-to-mouth drinking movements had been preformed instinctively, without forethought._

_"More," was all Gilbert said, continuing to act like a man in complete control of himself. Ripley found a large container, filled it to the brim and handed it to him. He downed the contents like a man who'd just spent ten year wandering in the desert, then sagged back on the padded platform, panting._

_"How do you feel?" asked Dallas._

_"Terrible. What happened to me?"_

_"You don't remember?" Ash said._

_So, Apollo told herself, the amnesia analogy was nearer the mark than she'd expected._

_Gilbert winced slightly, more form muscles cramping from disuse than anything else, and took a deep breath. "I don't remember anything. I can barely remember my name."_

_"Just for the record ...and medical report," asked Ash professionally, "what is your name?"_

_"Kane. Gilbert Kane."_

_"That's all you remember?"_

_"For the moment." He let his gaze travel slowly over the assembly of anxious faces. "I remember all of you, though I can't put names to you yet. Except you," His gaze rested on his little sister. "Apollo, right? You're my sister... I think."_

_"That's right. I'm three years younger than you are."_

_"You'll remember the others as well," Ash assured him confidently. "You recall your own name, your sister and you remeber faces. That's a good start. Also a sign that your loss of memory isn't permanent."_

_"Do you hurt?" Surprisingly, it was the stoic Parker who asked the first sensitive question._

_"All over. I feel like somebody's been beating me with a stick for about six years." He sat up on the pallet again, swung his legs over the side and smiled. "God, am I hungry. How long was I out?"_

_Dallas continued to stare at the apparently unharmed man in disbelief. "Couple of days. You sure you don't have any recollection of what happened to you?"_

_"Nope. Not a thing."_

_"What's the last thing you remember?" Ripley asked him._

_"I don't know."_

_"You were with Dallas and Apollo on a strange planet, exploring. Do you remember what happened there?"_

_Gilbert' forehead wrinkled as he tried to battle through the mists obscuring his memories. Real remembrances remained tantalizingly out of reach, realization a painful, incomplete process._

_"Just some dream about smothering. Where are we now? Still on the planet"_

_Ripley shook her head. "No, I'm delighted to say. We're in hyperspace, on our way home."_

_"Getting ready to go back in the freezers." Brett added. He was as anxious as the others to repair the mindless protection of hypersleep. Anxious for the nightmare that had forced itself on them to be put in suspension along with their bodies._

_Though looking at the revitalized Kane made it hard to reconcile their memories with the image of the alien horror he'd brought aboard, the petrified creature was there for anyone to inspect, motionless in its stasis tube._

_"I'm all for that," Gilbert said readily. "Feel dizzy and tired enough to go into deep sleep without the freezers." He looked around the infirmary wildly. "Right now, though, I'm starving, I want some food before we go under."_

_"I'm pretty hungry myself." Parker's stomach growled indelicately. "It's tough enough coming out of hypersleep without your belly rumbling. Better if you go under with a full stomach. Makes it easier coming out."_

_"I won't argue that." Dallas said. "We could all use some food. One meal before bed..."_

_Coffee and tea had been enjoyed on the mess table by individual servings of food. Everyone ate slowly, their enthusiasm coming from the fact that they were a whole crew again rather than from the bland offerings of the autochef._

_Only Gilbert Kane ate differently, wolfing down huge portions of the artificial meats and vegetables. He'd already finished two normal helpings and was starting in on a third with no sign of slowing down. Unmindful of nearby displays of human gluttony. Jones the cat ate delicately from a dish in the center of the table._

_Kane looked up and waved a spoon at them, spoke with his mouth full. "First thing I'm going to do when we get back is eat some decent food. I'm sick of artificial. I don't care what the company manuals say, it still tastes of recycling. There's a twang to artificial that no amount of spicing or seasoning can eliminate."_

_"I've had worse than this," Parker commented thoughtfully. "but I've had better too."_

_Apollo frowned at the engineer, a spoonful of steak-that-wasn't suspended halfway between plate and lips. "For someone who doesn't like it, you're eating it like there's no tomorrow."_

_"I mean, I like it," Parker explained, shoveling down another spoonful._

_"No kidding?" Gilbert didn't pause in his eating, but did throw Parker a look of suspicion, as though the engineer might not be right in the head._

_Parker tried not to sound defensive. "So I like it. It sort of grows on you."_

_"It should," Kane shot back. "You know what this stuff is made of."_

_"I know what it's made out of," Parker replied. "So what? It's food now. You're hardly one to talk, the way you're gulping it down."_

_"I've got an excuse." Kane stuffed another huge forkful in his mouth. "I'm starving." He glanced around the table."Anyone know if amnesia effects the appetite?"_

_"Appetite, hell." Dallas picked at the remnants of his single serving. "You had nothing in you but liquids all the time you were in the autodoc. Sucrose, dextrose and the like keep you alive but don't exactly satisfy. No wonder you're starving."_

_"Yeah." Gilbert swallowed another double mouthful. "It's almost like I ...like I ..." He broke off, grimaced, then looked confused and a little frightened._

_Apollo leaned towards him. "What is it, Bertie... what's wrong? Something in the food?"_

_"No... I don't think so. It tasted alright. I don't think..." He stopped in mid-sentence again. His expression was strained and he was grunting steadily._

_"What's the matter then?" wondered a worried Ripley._

_"I don't know." He made another twisted face, looking like a fighter who had just taken a solid punch in the gut. "I'm getting cramps... getting worse."_

_Nervous faces watched the exec's face twist in pain and confusion. Abruptly, he let out a loud, deep-toned groan and clutched at the edge of the table with both hands. His knuckled paled and tendons stood out in his arms. His whole body was trembling, as if he was freezing, though it was pleasantly warm in the mess room._

_"Breathe deeply, work at it," Ash advised, when no one else offered any suggestions._

_Kane tried. The deep breath turned into a scream._

_"Oh, God, it hurts so badly. It hurts. It hurts." He stood unsteadily, still shaking, hands digging into the table as if afraid to let go. "Ohhhh!"_

_"What is it?" Apollo asked helplessly._

_"What hurts? Something in the...?"_

_The look of agony that covered Kane's face at that moment cut off Brett's questioning more effectively than any shout. The exec tried to rise from the table, failed and fell back. He could no longer control his body. His eyes bulged and he let out a lingering, nerve-chilling shriek. It echoed around the mess, sparing none of the onlookers, refusing to fade._

_"His shirt..." Ripley murmured, as though paralyzed as Kane, though from a different cause. She was pointing at the slumped officer's chest._

_A red stain had appeared on his tunic. It spread rapidly, became a broad, uneven bloody smear across his lower chest. There followed the sound of fabric tearing, ugly and intimate in the cramped room. His shirt split like the skin of a melon, peeled back on both sides as a small head the size of a mans fist punched outward._

A loud yelp passed Apollo Kane's lips as she shot straight up in bed, her hands trying to scramble to where her older brother had been. She pulled her shaking arms back to her chest and curled her legs up to them, poorly stifled sobs racking her body. It had been fifty-seven years since that incident, though it felt like only a few days ago to her. Gilbert Kane, age twenty-nine at time of death, the eldest child of Juliet and Richard Kane, had been the first member of the _Nostromo_ crew to die at the hands of that alien.

No more physically different than she had been on that awful day, Apollo slowly rocked herself back and forth on the Gateway Station bed, the thin sheets bunched up around her feet. The memory of her older brother taunted her, memories of their childhood. With their mother and father. All of the people in her memory had died, all before their time. Their father had died of Tuberculosis, a disease that had supposedly died out years previous.

And, according to Burke; their mother had died of a heart-attack after finding out that the ship that her two eldest children had been had been announced M.I.A after they hadn't arrived a week after the estimated time.

It seemed Apollo had woken up Ripley when she had yelped, as somebody was rubbing her back comfortingly. It seemed that this had been happening more frequently as of late, Apollo would wake up from her reoccurring dream about Gilbert, start crying and Ripley would be the one to comfort her.

She knew why the younger girl was crying. She had seen her best friend - her brother's chest get ripped apart by a creature that had killed all but two of the crew-members of the _Nostromo_. Ellen Ripley and Apollo Kane had barely survived the attack by the alien with their lives intact. Jones the cat didn't seem as effected as the two humans, perhaps because the alien hadn't tried to kill him, only the humans aboard the ship.

"It's alright." Ripley hushed the younger girl gently, her maternal instincts were still in place. "It's okay, you're safe. We're safe. That thing is dead, it's gone and it won't be coming back."

"We'll never be safe, Rip. You know this as well as I do. As long as the company wants one of those... things we won't be safe. We're the only two people in the universe that have ever seen one!" Apollo sobbed into Ripley's shoulder, as the two women rocked softly on the bed.

They stayed that way for hours, slowing swaying back and fourth on the bed until Apollo eventually drifted back off into an anxious sleep, leaving Ripley to crawl back into her own bed on the opposite side of the small room. Apollo needed to get back on the job, Ripley decided. She needed to get her mind away from the memory of her brother, and back on androids like before. The old Apollo would never stop talking about synthetics. They were her life, ever since she was a young girl. There was no one more shocked than Apollo when they discovered that Ash was an Android. She had even admitted that she was probably a-sexual. Since she had never found either sex attractive before, only her work with synthetics interested her.

Apollo was a pretty girl, with recently cut, thick dark chocolate brown hair that was now cropped short enough that it tickled the top of her ears, and green eyes. Her face was angular, with high cheek bones and large eyes that could look either innocent or evil depending on how she felt, and thick dark lashes. Her eyebrows always seemed neatly plucked, they were dark, thin and arched over her eyes perfectly. She was slim, but not stick thin. She was fairly flat-chested, though she had a small waist and jutting hips, not that you could tell from the attire that she chose to wear. Ripley only knew because she had seen her in nothing but underwear and a vest in the hypersleep capsule. Plenty of women would kill for the natural beauty that Apollo possessed, but to Apollo it didn't matter. She wore eyeliner and un-needed mascara sometimes, and that was about it. She was an Engineer, a Science Officer, an Android Specialist; she didn't need to look pretty.

Ripley often wondered if Apollo had ever been in a relationship before. She had received a lot of attention from Parker and Brett when the _Nostromo_ had first cast off. Constant cat calls and wolf whistles from the opposite side of the Engine Room, that is, until Gilbert Kane had gotten bored and decided to visit her during work hours.

Before everyone had even met each other, when they had seen two Kane's on the crew list they had suspected a married couple. It had come as a shock to see Gilbert and Apollo Kane walking into the ship together, looking almost identical. Dark hair, green eyes, British. They had the same quirks: sarcastic, dry humor; quick, witty responses; hot-headed, though both were hard workers.

But just from the way Apollo talked to men seemed utterly relaxed, she had no problem making a sexual joke around them, she sometimes acted more male than female. Though she enjoyed having long hair, usually held up in a ponytail for work, she wore green-grey overalls most of the time, with a tank-top underneath it, and brown boots that were a few sizes too big and scuffed along the floor when she walked. The overalls had a number of stains on them, ranging from the creamy, milky white blood of synthetics she had fixed or helped create, to black oil smudges from the engine of the ship.

Another objective for Ripley; get Apollo a date.

Slowly Ripley drifted back off to sleep, she needed as much of it as she could get, with the debriefing being the next day. Scrap that; later that day. Dreams of the alien plagued her dreams.

Neither wanted to sleep. But they needed it.

Despite their determination, by midday both women were anything but cool and collected. Repetition of the same questions, the idiotic disputations of the facts as they'd reported them, the same exhaustive examination of minor points that left the major ones untouched - all combined to render Ripley and Apollo frustrated and angry.

As they spoke to the somber inquisitors the large videoscreen behind them was printing out mug shots and dossiers. They were glad it was behind them, because the faces were those of the _Nostromo's_ crew. There was Parker, grinning like a goon. And Brett, placid and bored as the camera did its duty. Dallas was there too, and Lambert. Ash the traitor, his soulless face enriched with programmed false piety. Gilbert...

Gilbert. Better the picture behind her, like the memories.

"Do you have earwax or what?" Ripley finally snapped. "We've been here three hours. How many different ways do you want us to tell the same story? You think it'll sound better in Swahili, get me a Swahili translator and we'll do it in Swahili. I'd try Japanese, but I'm out of practice. Also out of patience. How long does it take for you to make up your collective mind?"

Van Leuwen pressed his fingers together and frowned. His expression was as grey as his suit. It was approximated by the looks on the faces of his fellow board members. There was eight of them on the board of inquiry, and not a friendly one in the lot. Executives. Administrated. Adjusters. How could they convince them? They weren't human beings. They were expressions of bureaucratic disapproval. Phantoms.

"This isn't a simple as you seem to believe," he told them quietly. "Look at it from out perspective. You freely admit to detonating the engines of, and thereby destroying, and M-Class interstellar freighter. A rather expensive piece of hardware."

The insurance investigator was possibly the unhappiest member of the board. "Forty-two million in adjusted dollars. That's minus payload, of course. Engine detonation wouldn't leave anything salvageable, even if we could locate the remains after fifty-seven years."

Van Lauwen nodded absently before continuing. "It's not as if we think you're lying. The lifeboat shuttle's flight recorder corroborates some elements of your account. The least controversial ones. That the _Nostromo_ set down on LV-426, an unsurveyed and previously unvisited planet, at the time and date specified. That repairs were made. That it resumed its course after a brief layover and was subsequently set for self-destruct and that this, in fact, occurred. That the order for engine overload was provided by you. For reasons unknown."

"Look, we told you -"

Van Leuwen interrupted, having heard it before. "It did not, however, contain any entries concerning the hostile alien life-form you allegedly picked up during your short stay on the planets surface."

"We didn't 'pick it up'," Apollo shot back. "Like we told you, it -"

She broke off, staring at the hollow faces gazing stonily back at her. She was wasting her breath. This wasn't a real board of inquiry. This was a formal wake, a post-interment party. The object here wasn't to ascertain the truth in hopes of vindication, it was to smooth out the rough spots and make the landscape all nice and neat again. And there wasn't thing they could do about it, she saw now. Their fate had been decided before they'd set foot in the room. The inquiry was a show, the questions a sham. To satisfy the record.

"Then somebody's gotten to it and doctored the recorder. A competent tech could do that in an hour. Who had access to it?"

The representative of the Extrasolar Colonization Administration was a woman on the ungenerous side of fifty. Previously she'd looked bored. Now she just sat in her chair and shook her head slowly.

"Would you just listen to yourself for one minute? Do you really expect us to believe some of the things you've been telling us? To much hypersleep can do all kinds of funny things to the mind."

Apollo glared at her, furious at being so helpless. "You want to hear some funny things?"

Van Leuwen stepped in verbally. "The analytical team that went over your shuttle centimeter by centimeter found no physical evidence of the creature you describe or anything like it. No damage to the interior of the craft. No etching of metal surfaces that might have been caused by an unknown corrosive substance."

Ripley had kept her control all morning, answering the most insane queries with patience and understanding. The time for being reasonable was at and end, and so was her store of patience.

"Good! Because I blew it out of the airlock!" She subsided a little at this declaration was greeted by the silence of the tomb. "Like we said."

The insurance man leaned forward and peered along the desk at the ECA representative. "Are there any species like this 'hostile organism' native to LV-426?"

"No." The woman exuded confidence. "It's a rock. No indigenous life bigger than a simple virus. Certainly nothing complex. Not even a flatworm. Never was, never will be."

Apollo grit her teeth as she struggled to stay calm. "We told you, it wasn't indigenous." She tried to meet their eyes, but they were having none of it, so she concentrated on Van Leuwen and the ECA rep. "There was a signal coming from the surface. The _Nostromo's_ scanner picked it up and woke us from hypersleep, as per standard regulations. When we traced it, we found an alien spacecraft like nothing you or anyone else has ever seen. That was on the recorder too.

"The ship was derelict. Crashed, abandoned... we never did find out. We homed in on it's beacon. We found the ship's pilot, also like nothing previously encountered. He was dead in his chair with a hole in his chest the size of a welders tank."

Maybe the story bothered the ECA rep. Or maybe she was just tired of hearing it for the umpteenth time. Whatever it was, she felt it was her place to respond.

"To be perfectly frank, we've surveyed over three hundred worlds, and no one's ever reported the existence of a creature, which using your own words," - and she bend forward to read from Ripley's formal statement - "'gestates in a human host' and has 'concentrated molecular acid for blood.'"

Ripley spared a glance towards Burke, who sat silent and tight-lipped at the far end of the table. He was not a member of the board of inquiry, so he had kept silent throughout the questioning. Not that he could do anything to help them. Everything depended on how their official version of the _Nostromo's_ demise was received. Without the corroborating evidence from the shuttles flight recorder the board had nothing to go on but their word, and it had been made clear from the start how little weight they'd decided to allot to that. She wondered who had doctored the recorder and why. Or maybe it simply had malfunctioned on its own. At this point it didn't much matter. She was tired of playing the game. It was obvious that Apollo was as well. She was stood with both hands resting on the table, her head hung low between her shoulders. Ripley was surprised that she hadn't walked out yet. It was a habit she had; leaving the room before she lost her temper too much.

"Look, I can see where this is going." She half-smiled, an expression devoid of amusement. This was hardball time, and she was going to finish it out even though she had no chance of winning. "The whole business with the android - why we followed the beacon in the first place - it all adds up, though we can't prove it." She looked down the length of the table, and now she did grin. "Somebody's covering their Ash, and it's been decided that we're going to take the muck for it. Okay, fine. But there's one thing you can't change, one fact you can't doctor away.

"Those things exist. You can wipe me out, you can wipe Apollo out, but you can't wipe that out. Back on that planet is an alien ship, and on that ship are thousands of eggs. Thousands. Do you understand? Do you have any idea what that implies?"

Apollo took over for her. "I suggest you go back there with an expedition and find it, using the flight's recorder's data, and find it fast. Find it and deal with it, preferably with an orbital nuke, before one of your survey teams come back with a little surprise."

"Thank you, Officer Kane," Van Leuwen began. "that will be -"

"Because just one of those things," she went on, stepping on him. "managed to kill our entire crew within twelve hours of hatching."

The administrator rose. Apollo wasn't the only one in the room who was out of patience. "Thank you. That will be all."

"Not at all!" She smacked her hand against the desk forcefully, and glared at him. This was a side Ripley had never seen on Apollo, "If those things gets back here, that will be all. Then you can just kiss it goodbye. Just kiss it goodbye!"

The ECA representative turned calmly to the administrator. "I believe we have enough information on which to base a determination. I think it's time to close this inquest and retire for deliberation."

Van Leuwen glanced at his fellow board members. He might as well have been looking at mirror images of himself, for all superficial differences of face and build. They were of one mind.

That was something that could not be openly expressed, however. It would not look good in the record. Above all, everything had to look good in the record.

"Gentlemen, ladies?" Acquiescent nods. He looked back down at the subject under discussion. "Officer Kane, Officer Ripley, if you'd excuse us please?"

"Not likely." Trembling with frustration, Apollo turned to leave the room. As she did so, her eyes fastened on the picture of Gilbert that was staring blankly down from the videoscreen. Executive Officer Kane. Big brother Gilbert. Best friend Gilbert. Dead Gilbert. She strode out angrily.

There was nothing more to do or say. They'd been found guilty, and now they were going to go through the motion of giving her an honest trial. Formalities. The Company and it's friends loved their formalities. Nothing wrong with death and tragedy, as long as you could safely suck all emotion out of it. Then it would be safe to put on the annual report. So the inquest had to be held, emotion translated into sanitized figures in neat columns. A verdict had to be rendered. But not to loudly, lest the neighbors overhear.

None of which really bothered Apollo. The imminent demise of her career didn't bother her. What she couldn't forgive was the blind stupidity being flaunted by the all-powerful in the room she'd left. So they didn't believe them. given their type of mindset and the absence of solid evidence, she could understand that. But to ignore their story completely, to refuse to check it out, that she could never forgive.

Ripley booted the wall next to Burke as he brought coffee and doughnuts from the vending machine in the hall. The machine thanked him politely as it accepted his credcard. Like practically everything on the Gateway Station, the machine had no odor. Neither did the black liquid it poured. As for the alleged doughnuts, they might have flown over a wheat field.

"You had them eating out of your hand, kiddo." Burke was trying to cheer them up. They were grateful for the attempt, even as it failed. But there was no reason to take their anger out on him.

"They had their minds made up before we even went in there. We've wasted an entire morning. They should've had scripts printed up for everyone to read from, including us. Would've been easier just to recite what they wanted to hear instead of trying to remember the truth." Ripley glanced at him. "You know what thy think?"

"I can imagine." He bit into a doughnut.

"They think we're headcases."

"You two are headcases." he told her cheerfully. "Have a doughnut. Chocolate or buttermilk?"

Apollo eyed the precooked torus he offered distastefully. "You can taste the difference?"

"Not really, but the colors are nice."

She didn't grin, but she didn't sneer at him either.

The 'deliberations' didn't take long. No reason why they should, she thought as they re-entered the room and resumed their seats. Burke took his place on the far side of the chamber. He started to wink at her, though thought better of it, and aborted the gesture. She recognized the eye twitch for what it almost became and was glad he hadn't followed through.

Van Leuwen cleared his throat. He didn't find it necessary to look to his fellow board members for support.

"It is the finding of this board of inquiry that Warrent Officer Ellen Ripley, NOC-14672, and Science Officer Apollo Kane, NOC-15340, have acted with questionable judgment and is therefore declared unfit to hold an ICC licence as a commercial flight officer and android engineer."

If any of them expected some sort of reaction from the condemned duo, they were disappointed. They sat there and stared silently back at them, tight-lipped and defiant. More likely the board was relieved. Emotional outbursts would have been recorded. Van Leuwen continued,

"Said licenses are hereby suspended indefinitely, pending review at a future date to be specified later." He cleared his throat, "In the unusual length of time spent by the defendants in hypersleep and the concomitant indeterminable effects on the human nervous system, no criminal charges will be filed at this time. You are released on your own recognizance for a six-month period of psychometric probation, to include monthly review by an approved ICC psychiatric tech and treatment and or medication may be prescribed."

It was short, neat, and not at all sweet, and they took it all without a word, until Van Leuwen had finished and departed. Burke saw the look in Ripley's eyes and tried to restrain her.

"Lay off," he whispered to her. Ripley threw off his hand and continued up the corridor. "It's over."

"Right," she called back to him and Apollo as she lengthened her stride. "So what else can they do to me?"

She caught up with Van Leuwen as he stood waiting for the elevator. "Why don't you check out LV-426?"

He glanced back at her. "Ms. Ripley, it wouldn't matter. The decision of the board is final."

"The heck with the boards decision. We're not talking about me and Apollo now. We're talking about the next poor souls to find that ship. Just tell me why you don't check it out."

"Because I don't have to," he told her brusquely. "The people who live there checked it out years ago. They've never reported any 'hostile organism' or alien ship. Do you think I'm a complete fool? Did you think the board wouldn't seek some sort of verification, if only to protect ourselves from future inquiries? And by the way, they call it Acheron now."

Fifty-seven years. Long time. People could accomplish a lot in fifty-seven years. Build, move around, establish new colonies. Ripley struggled with the import of the administrators words.

"What are you talking about? What people?"

Van Leuwen joined the other passengers in the elevator car. Ripley put an arm between the doors to keep them from closing. The doors sensors obediently waited for her to remove it.

"Terraformers." Van Leuwen explained. "Planetary engineers. Much has happened in that field while you slept, Ripley. We've made significant advances, great strides. The cosmos is not a hospitable place, but we're changing that. It's what we call a shake-'n'-bake colony. They set up atmosphere processors to make the air breathable. We can do that now, efficiently and economically, as long as we have some kind of resident atmosphere to work with. Hydrogen, argon - methane is the best. Acheron is swimming with methane, with a portion of oxygen and sufficient nitrogen for beginning bonding. It's nothing now. The air's barley breathable. But given time, patience, and hard work, there'll be another habitable world out there ready to comfort and succor humanity. At a price, of course. Ours is not a philanthropic institution, though we like to think of what we do as furthering mankind's progress.

"It's a big job. Decades worth. They've already been there more than twenty years. Peacefully."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because it was felt that the information might have biased your testimony. Personally I don't think it would have made a difference. You obviously believe what you believe. But many of my colleagues were of a different opinion. I doubt it would have changed our decision."

The doors tried to close, and she slammed them apart. The other passengers began to exhibit signs of annoyance

"How many colonists?"

Van Leuwen brow furrowed. "At last count I'd guess sixty, maybe seventy, families. We've found people work better when they're not separated from their loved ones. It's more expensive, but it pays for itself in the long run, and gives the community the feeling of a real colony instead of merely an engineering outpost. It's tough on some of the women and the kids, but when their tour duty ends, they can retire comfortably. Everyone benefits from the arrangement."

"Sweet Jesus." Ripley whispered.

One of the passengers leaned forward and spoke irritably, "Do you mind?"

Absently she dropped her arm to her side. Freed of their responsibility, the doors closed quietly. Van Leuwen had alrady forgotten her, and she him. She was looking instead into her imagination.

Not liking what she saw there.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I do not own Aliens or any part of the franchise. I only own Apollo Kane.**

* * *

It was quiet in the apartment except for the blare of the wallscreen. Apollo ignored the screen and concentrated instead on the smoke rising from Ripley's de-nicotined cigarette. It formed lazy, hazy patterns in the air.

The apartment was in better shape then the two of them. There was just enough decorative touches to keep it from appearing spartan. None of the touches were what another might call personal. The sink was full of dirty dishes even though the dishwasher sat empty beneath it.

Apollo was wearing her trademark overalls, with a dark orange tank top underneath, and unmatching purple and red socks. Ripley was lounging around in a bath rode that was ageing as rapidly as it's owner. In the adjoining bedroom, sheets lay in heaps at the end of the mattresses. Jones prowled in the kitchen, hunting overlooked morsels. He would find none. The kitchen kept itself reasonably antiseptic despite a deliberate lack of cooperation from its owners.

"Hey, Bob!" the wallscreen bleated vapidly. "I heard that you and the family are heading off to the colonies!"

"Best decision I ever made, Phil." replied a grinning nonentity from the opposite side of the wall. "We'll be starting a new life from scratch in a clean world. No crime, no unemployment..."

Apollo stopped listening, they were just well paid actors, that was all. There was barely any truth behind their words. She was tempted to attempt to dismantle something electronic. It was a bad habit of hers, she like to dismantle things, and had since she was young, ranging from the TV remote to the actual TV. Had she still got her licence, she would be in the Tech Labs, helping fix broken Androids.

The door buzzed sharply for attention and she and Ripley jumped. Jones merely glanced up and meowed before trundling off towards the bathroom. He didn't like strangers. Always had been a smart cat.

Ripley put the cigarette aside and moved to open the door. She didn't bother to check through the peephole. Theirs was a full-security building. Not that after their recent experiences there was anything in an Earthside city that could frighten them.

Carter Burke stood there, wearing his usual apologetic smile. Standing behind him and looking formal was a younger man clad in the severe dress-black uniform of an officer in the Colonial Marines.

"Hi Ripley, Apollo." Burke indicated to his companion. "This is Lieutenant Gorman of the Co -"

The closing door cut his sentence in half. Apollo snorted in humor as Ripley turned her back on it, but she'd neglected to cut power to the hall speaker. Burke's voice reached them via the concealed membrane.

"Ripley, we have to talk."

"No, we don't. Get lost, Carter. And take your friend with you."

"No can do. This is important."

"Not to me it isn't. Not to Apollo either. Nothing's important to us."

Burke went silent, but she sensed he hadn't left. She knew him well enough to know that he wouldn't give up easily. The Company rep wasn't demanding, but he was an accomplished wheedler.

As it developed, he didn't have to argue with them. All he had to do was say one sentence.

"We've lost contact with the Colony of Acheron."

A sinking feeling inside as she mulled over the ramifications of that unexpected statement. Well, perhaps not entirely unexpected. Apollo rose to her feet as Ripley opened the door again. It wasn't a ploy. That much was evident in Burke's expression. Gorman's gaze shifted from one woman to the other to Burke. He was clearly uncomfortable at being ignored, even as he tried not to show it.

Ripley stepped aside. "Come in."

Burke surveyed the apartment and gratefully said nothing, shying away from inanities like 'Nice place you have here' when it obviously wasn't. He also stayed away from saying, 'You're looking well', since that would also have been a lie. She could respect him from restraint. Ripley gestured towards the table.

"Want something? Coffee, tea, spritz?"

"Coffee would be fine," he replied. Gorman added a nod.

She went into the compact kitchen and dialed up a few cups. Bubbling sound began to emanate from the processor as she turned back to the den, where Apollo had just offered them a seat, which they politely declined.

"You didn't need to bring the Marines." Ripley smiled thinly at him. "We're past the violent stage. The psych techs said so, and it's right there on my chart." She waved to a table piled high with papers. "So what's with the escort?"

"I'm here as an official representative of the corps." Gorman was clearly uneasy and more than willing to let Burke to the bulk of the conversation. How much did he know, and what had they told him about her and Ripley? she wondered. Was he disappointed in not encountering some stoned harridan? Not that his opinion mattered.

"So you've lost contact." Apollo feigned indifference. "So?"

Burke looked down at his slim-line, secured briefcase. "It has to be checked out. Fast. All communications are down. They've been down too long for the interruption to be due to equipment failure. Acheron's been in business for years. They're experienced people, and they have appropriate backup systems. Maybe they're working on fixing the problem right now. But it's been no-go dead silence for too long. People are getting nervous. Somebody has to go and check it out in person. It's the only way to quiet the nervous nellies.

"Probably they'll correct the trouble while the ship's on it's way out and the whole trip will be a waste of time and money, but it's time to set out."

He didn't have to elaborate. Ripley and Apollo had already gotten where he was going and returned. Ripley went into the kitchen and brought out the coffees. While Gorman sipped his cup of brew she began pacing. The den was too small for proper pacing, but she tried anyway. Burke just waited.

"No," she said finally. "There's no way."

"Hear me out. It's not what you think."

She stopped in the middle of the floor and stared at him in disbelief. "Not what I think? Not what I think? I don't have to think, Burke. I was reamed, steamed and dry-cleaned by you guys, and now you want me to go back out there? Forget it!"

She was trembling as she spoke. Gorman misinterpreted the reaction as anger, but it was pure fear. She was scared. Gut-scared and trying to mask it with indignation. Burke knew what she was feeling but pressed on anyway, glancing at Apollo who had not moved from her spot, curled up on the floor next to the couch. He had no choice.

"Look," he continued in what he hoped was his best conciliatory manner, "we don't know what's going on down there. If their relay satellite's gone out instead of the ground transmitter, the only way to fix it is with a relief team. There are no spacecrafts in the colony. If that's the case, then they're all sitting around out there cursing the Company for not getting off it's collective butt and sending out a repair crew pronto. If it is the satellite relay, then the relief team won't eve have to set foot on the plant itself. But we don't know what the trouble is, and if it's not the orbital relay, then I'd like to have you two there. As advisers. That's all."

Gorman lowered his coffee. "You wouldn't be going in with the troops. Assuming we even have to go in. I can guarantee your safety."

Apollo rolled her eyes and glanced to the ceiling. "Sure you can."

"These aren't your average city cops, Apollo," Burke said forcefully. "These Colonial Marines are some tough hombres, and they'll be packing state-of-the-art firepower. Man plus machine. There's nothing they can't handle. Right, Lieutenant?"

Gorman allowed himself a small smile. "We're trained to deal with the unexpected. We've handled problems on worse worlds than Archeron. Our casualty rate for this kind of operation hovers right around zero. I expect the percentage to improve a little more after this visit."

If this declaration was intended to impress the two women, it failed miserably. Ripley looked back to Burke.

"What about you? What's your interest in this?"

"Well, the Company co-financed the colony in tandem with the Colonial Administration. Sort of an advance mineral rights and a portion of the long-term developmental profits. We're diversifying, getting into a lot of terraforming. Real estate on a galactic scale. Building better worlds and all that."

"Yeah, yeah. I've seen the commercials."

"The corporation won't see any substantial profits out of Archeron until terraforming's complete, but a big outfit like that has to consider the long term." Seeing as this was having no effect on his host, Burke switched to anoher track. "I hear you're working in the cargo docks over Portside?"

Her reply was defensive, as to be expected. "That's right. What about it?"

He ignored the challenge. "Running loaders, forklifts, suspension grates; that sort of thing?"

"It's all I could get. I'm crazy if I'm going to live on charity all my life. Anyway, it keeps my mind off... everything. Days off are worse. Too much time to think. I'd rather keep busy."

"You like that kind of work?"

"Are you trying to be funny?"

He fiddled with the catch on his case. "Maybe it's not all you can get. What if I said I could get you reinstated as a flight officer? And you an Andriod Engineer? Get your licences back? And the Company has agreed to pick up your contracts? No more hassles with the commission, no more arguments. The official reprimand comes out of your record. Without a trace. As far as anyone will be concerned, you've been on a leave of absence. Perfectly normal following a long tour of duty. It'll be like nothing happened. Won't even affect your pension rating."

"What about the ECA and insurance people?"

"Insurance is settled, over, done with. They're out of it. Since nothing will appear on your records, you won't be considered any more a risk than you were before your last trip. As far as ECA is concerned, they'd like to see you go out with the relief team too. It's all taken care of."

"If we go?"

"If you go." He nodded, leaning slightly toward Ripley. He wasn't exactly pleading. It was more like a practiced sales pitch. "It's a second chance, kiddo. Most people who get taken down by a board of inquiry never have the opportunity to come back. If the problem's nothing more than a busted relay satellite, all you have to do it sit in your cubbyhole and read while the techs take care of it. That and collect your trip pay while you're in hypersleep. By going, you can wipe out all the unpleasantness and put yourself right back up there where you used to be. Full rating, full pension accumulation, the works. I've seen your record, Ripley. One more long out-trip and you qualify for a captains certificate.

"And it'll be the best thing in the whole world for you to face this fear and beat it. You gotta get back on the horse."

"Spare me Burke," she said frostily. "I've had my psych evaluation for the month."

His smile slipped a little, but his tone grew more determined. "Fine. Let's cut the crap, then. I've read your evaluations. You wake up every night, sheets soaking, the same nightmare over and over -"

"No! The answer is no." She retrieved both coffee cups even though neither was empty. It was another form of dismissal. "Now please go."

Apollo looked at them apologetically, "I'm sorry. Just go, would you?"

The two men exchanged a look. Gorman's expression was unreadable, but she had a feeling that his attitude had shifted from curious to contemptuous. Burke mined a pocket, removed a translucent card and placed it on the table before heading for the door. He paused in the portal to smile back at her.

"Think about it."

Then they were gone, leaving them alone with their thoughts.

Apollo refused to sleep that night. Too many haunted memories plaguing her mind when she did. She sat in her bed staring at some old Andriod Tech manuals that she had been given by Burke. Sometimes he wasn't too bad. _Current Synthetics typically possess an integrated Carbon 60 processor "brain" with a processing speed of 1015 floating point operations per second. Memory capacity includes 1 terabyte of fast cache buffer RAM and 1.2 petabyte of non-volatile memory. The system is architectured around a very_ -

With a groan Ripley sat straight up in her bed, clutching her chest. She was breathing hard, painfully. Sucking in a particularly deep breath, she glanced around the tiny bedroom. She used the corner of the sheet to mop the sweat from her forehead and cheeks. Fingers fumbled in the nightstand drawer until they found a cigarette. She flicked the tip waited for the cylinder to ignite.

"You okay, Rip?" Apollo asked her.

She jumped, as if she had forgotten that she wasn't the only person in the room. She composed herself again and nodded. "Yeah," she coughed to clear her throat. "Yeah. I'm fine."

Leaning to her left, Ripley pawed through the other nightstand drawer until she'd located the card Burke had left behind. She turned it over in her fingers, then inserted it into a slot in the bedside console. The videoscreen that dominated the far wall immediately flashed the words STAND BY at her. She waited impatiently until Burke's face appeared. He was bleary-eyed and unshaven, having been roused from a sound sleep, but he managed a grin when he saw who was calling.

"Yello? Oh, Ripley. Hi."

"Burke, just tell me one thing." She hoped there was enough light in the room for the monitor ro pick up her expression as well as her voice. "That you're going out there to kill them. Not to study. Not to bring back. Just to burn them out, clean. Forever."

He woke up rapidly, she noted. "That's the plan. If there's anything dangerous walking around out there, we need to get rid of it. Got a colony to protect. No monkeying around with potentially dangerous organisms. That's Company policy. We find anything lethal, anything at all, we fry it. The scientists can go suck eggs. My word on it." A long pause and he leaned towards his own pickup, his face looming large on the screen. "Ripley. Ripley? You still there?"

No more time to think. Maybe it was time to stop thinking and just do. "Alright. I'm in." There, she'd gone and said it.

He looked like he wanted to reply, to congratulate or thank her. Something. She broke the connection before he could say a word. Apollo stared at Ripley as if she had lost her mind. She wanted to go back? She dropped the book onto the bed beside her and caught Ripley's eye. "You feeling alright, Rip? 'Cos you just signed us onto a suicide mission."

Ripley sat back up on her bed, "What do you mean us? I'm going. You're staying. I won't let you back there. Stay here, study to get your licence back, maybe meet a boy -"

"I don't care about boys! You're the closest thing I have to family now, and if you expect me to let you go on your own you need a new psych evaluation. Plus, who knows, there might be an android onboard I can befriend."

* * *

**Author's Note: Bishop makes his first appearance in the next chapter! So, ****I got two followers! Thank you Dr Moustachio Girl and Linden-Furaito! Sorry for taking so freaking long to update. School is being a dumb. Hopefully I will be able to update before the end of the month! If you can think of a way for me to improve this story please tell me, I'm always looking to improve! Thank you!**


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